


shaking

by virgo (gradually)



Category: Age of Ultron - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Canon Rromani Character, Character Study, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Lesbian Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Synesthesia, Trans Character, ambigious gender pietro maximoff, me: listens to sad country music ... me: ok im ready to write fic, pietros like... i am Too Fast for gender. i left her in the dust 300 years ago., wanda is a cool butch lesbian i dont make the rules, we are all hate tony stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 13:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19906642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gradually/pseuds/virgo
Summary: pietro maximoff through the years. this time, he doesn't die, and everything is going to be okay eventually.





	shaking

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so so much to my good friend for the donation that allowed me to spend time and energy on this fic and also be compensated for it! i hope you enjoy! 
> 
> also a quick note: seeing as hydra is literally like... nazis... i tweaked wanda and pietro's stories to be that their powers are inherent. alongside that is that wanda has synesthesia and thats a big way in which her powers work!

Pietro Maximoff is three years old and his sisters hair is the softest thing he’s ever known. He plaits her head through the dim light that filters in through their home, smog and dust and the sound of drunk men’s songs making their way in. Wanda inhales deep and whispers to no one, “I feel their sorrow. It feels orange.” Pietro nods as if he understands, and maybe, one day he will. They fall asleep on the couch, and when their parents tuck them in for bed, Pietro returns to the memory like an old shirt that still doesn’t fit correctly.

Pietro Maximoff is ten years old and he’s wearing his sisters clothes and hiding in a convent. All he knows is he hates Tony Stark. They have been walking for what feels like and may be months, a trail of rubble and blood behind them from their once-floating, now-falling city. Wanda says his anger is blue, so blue sometimes it hurts,  _ just talk to me, don’t bottle it up inside _ . Instead he runs up and down the track, beating no one’s records but his own, and one day he’s running so fast that everything is slow motion. Like any child, he uses this newfound ability to build up speed, sneak off to the cafeteria, and get himself and his sister a second helping of the bread and gruel of the day. They eat and laugh like the socialites they imagined destroyed their home and family. All they have left is mockery of memories. 

Pietro Maximoff is twelve years old and it’s becoming apparent to some of the nuns that he isn’t a girl. He pleads with them,  _ i am not just a girl, i am something else entirely, _ and they let him stay. He justifies that he is protecting Wanda, but what he does not know is she has set fire to too many things to need a protector. She hears the drunk men’s echoing songs and would do anything to get them back. Her hair is a crisp red, almost electric at the ends, and she thinks about how there is a whole world out there. Pietro is afraid to go past the track, the little gymnasium the convent calls a garden, and wanda wants nothing but to see the world out there. Pietro is a piercing blue, but some days, he is a heavy purple, anxious and worried. 

Pietro Maximoff is fourteen years old and he thinks he’s in love with a girl. The girl is in love with a boy and he cannot be that for her, so at night he sits and asks Wanda what color he is, hoping desperately for anything but blue, the powder blue of his socks and the walls of their room. Wanda sees red, holds it in her hands, makes a hole in the ceiling with the power of their anger and confusion, and they laugh and laugh and laugh. Pietro shows her how he runs until the world is slow, she blinks and her hair is divided into two symmetrical braids, and G_d, when did her hair get so long? 

Pietro and Wanda Maximoff turn fifteen years old on the last day of Hanukkah. Like the light in the temple they have survived and will survive again, they promise to each other to burn steadily and remember the stories they were told. The nuns ask why there is so much wax on the floor of the room but they do not have a menorah sturdy enough for the candles they nicked from the clergyboy’s closet. 

“Wanda,” he croaks into the ceiling the night of the New Year, “do you remember our mother?” 

She shakes her head silently in the bed below him. “I know she was kind. I know she wants us to keep going.”

Pietro leaned over the bunk bed to see her, a mess of untamable red hair and tears. “She told me.” 

They book a flight on the night of their sixteenth birthday to America. America lets them in, afraid of communism and Sokovia and so, so willing to indoctrinate them, but they are already too wise, and a friend of Tony Stark will always be their enemy. Wanda says such to the white woman with straight blonde hair at the airport who tries to welcome them to America. They take buses and buses and trains and end up at their friends auntie’s doorstep and they’re back to sleeping on couches, but they’re also back to smog and drunk singing, and the memories of their parents slowly piece themselves together. Wanda cuts her hair short, pierces her ears, and Pietro dyes his hair blonde like the Americans in their friends auntie’s sink when she’s at her second job. She comes home with McDonalds and giggles at how different and the same they look side-by-side, mirror images of the same pain. 

Pietro is seventeen years old and he is fighting a giant robot. A man, of all people, thinks he can tell him what to do. 

On the way there, the stranger laughs, runs a hand through his ratty blonde hair as he looks between Wanda and Pietro wearing matching scowls. 

“The duality of humankind, I guess.”

“It’s called a personality,” Wanda bites back, and Pietro laughs for the first time in a long time. 

A friend of Tony Stark’s continues to be his enemy, but for just this once he will allow himself to follow orders, and he runs and runs and runs fast so slow, the world is moving annoyingly slowly. He doesn’t know what street he’s on, doesn’t know where Wanda is, and the fear of the unknown sinks in. He can’t run away, because time will always catch up to him, and he knows this. The memory of Sokovia will make people look at him funny when they ask where his twin accents are, but Wanda has picked up English so much better than him, and he isn’t focusing, and his arms are on fire. He falls over and the world spins like normal, but he’s saved someone, hasn’t he? He spits up blood and he can hear Wanda scream. Her red webs are everywhere, the static in the sky and the corners of his eyes are red, red, and for a second he can feel and see nothing but color, and he looks down and he is blue and bleeding. 

Much later he wakes up and he’s in an unfamiliar bed, and Wanda is sitting in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable-looking chair, sleeping. His arms are all hooked up to machines, and he tries to run, but his body is still so tired. It is scarred and burning and he finally lets himself cry, left with no other option. He can’t run, he can’t hide inside familiarity, burning a hole into the same path over and over again, the boundary between safety and chaos.

He falls back asleep eventually, and when he wakes next, the blonde man is talking to Wanda, and she’s smiling. He glances over before falling asleep again. Later, she whispers to him that the blonde man owns a building where no one will care about if they’re Sokovian or Jewish or almost-Avengers.

Pietro and Wanda Maximoff turn eighteen on the fourth day of Hanukkah. Their apartment is warm and the smell of latkes permeates their clothes. Wanda emerges from the bathroom with a pair of clippers, her hair short and cropped once again, beaming. Her girlfriend greets her with a chaste kiss and Pietro just smiles as he shifts his focus back to the hot oil on the stove. He stares out the window, wondering if this time it will snow on this fateful day. If it doesn’t, he will just say it fell too quickly for anyone to see, just as he has. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, and let me know if you too would also like to provide a donation, through which i can write you a short story of your own choosing! 
> 
> i do not own any of the copyrighted materials i am writing about, including avengers: age of ultron, and the likenesses of comic book and movie characters wanda and pietro maximoff. they are owned by the disney overlords and i dont want to be sued please :(


End file.
